By Hubert O'Hearn, Torch specialist

-- 7/23 TNA IMPACT HITS & MISSES

Opening Thought: So I'm sitting here with all these little Post-It notes around me that I scribbled on while watching Impact and the whole thing is going to drive me nuts. I mean, I'm sure you've got your own problems and in part you're reading this column as a welcome distraction from them, so I'm not going to start singing "Cry Me a River" on you. But. This is going to be a ridiculously difficult column to write. The stuff I really, really liked on Impact still had elements I really, really disliked. And stuff I really disliked still had bits I enjoyed. Ah well, that's TNA for you - a weekly brain teaser. Let's get on with it!

IMPACT HITS

Clarifying Promos - I would like to personally thank Messrs. Taz and Angle for removing metaphorical thorns from my side. Taz neatly and cleanly stated at the top of the show precisely how and why he became Samoa Joe's latest mentor. Further, it became clear and understandable - finally - why Joe joined the Main Event Mafia. It wasn't about all this cozy crappy reasoning about how much money Joe was offered. That one worked for Ted DiBiase and no one since. No, joined the MEM because that was the best route to become a champion. Great. Terrific. I like that one. The show was off to a great start, particularly when we were told by Taz that Joe would be facing Homicide for the X Division Title. Yay! X Division Title match! That thing that wasn't good enough to bounce Sharmell vs. Jenna on a pay-per-view. I'll get to the match in the Misses. The match itself was fine. It should have been a Hit, but ... we'll get to that later.

Any who, Kurt Angle did a great clarifying promo as well. You remember last week it bugged me that there was no definition of what the MEM "taking control" of TNA meant? Now we know. Either the MEM gets its way or all the title holders leave the company. See? I'm happy now. I like when storylines have some thread of logic to them. (Weird little vision...Angle is about to leave to re-join WWE. He agrees to drop the strap to Jeff Jarrett on Impact, but first there's this pay-per-view in Angle's hometown of Pittsburgh. Earl Hebner is the referee and ... naw, nobody needs another Montreal Screwjob reference...although I just did one. Damn.)

The Deaner - The character of Comedy Hick Wrestler is as old as the hills, or hillbillies at any rate. But when it's done right it still cracks me up and The Deaner is the best at it since Jamie Noble's heyday. I had some good chuckles from his skit with the Beautiful People, but (I told you that inside every Hit there is a hidden Miss) I wish they had strung it along for a few weeks instead of going straight for the nutmeg shot. The Deaner would be a better foil for the BP's than Kip James - that of course being the absolute definition of the term 'faint praise' - and it would give the largely forgotten ODB something to feud about. Either or both of Velvet Sky and Madison Rayne need some kind of feud to give themselves some definition. Hell, I just about typed the name 'Taylor Madison' so that tells you something.

Actual Hype for an A.J. Styles Match - So we're going to have a two out of three match competition to see who gets to be the third man in the Hard Justice main event with Kurt Angle and Sting. The good news is that we'll actually get A.J. Styles in matches for the next three weeks. The bad part is that he'll be going against Matt Morgan. No, wait. That's unfair of me. Let's look at this as being Matt Morgan's final audition to be or not to be a main eventer. If a guy like A.J. who has a grib of five star classics in his portfolio can't pull at least one three star out of Morgan, then I'm sorry but the big guy will have proven that he's just another big guy. But let's hope he can pull it off.

Mike Tenay - Rivers are running backwards and dogs are walking on their hind legs again. I'm giving Mike Tenay a Hit. Principally he gets it for his comment about the gentleman's agreement in the locker room that the piledriver is a banned move. That is such an important thing to say. I remember being a kid in the recess yard and we would all try out the moves that we'd seen on All-Star Wrestling the Saturday night before. No doubt kids still do the same thing today. But there's a big difference between Verne Gagne's sleeper hold and dropping someone on their head. The other good thing Tenay did this week was to not sound all silly when he disagreed with Don West. West didn't get off as many snappy lines this week, but on balance this was one of their better efforts as a team.

IMPACT MISSES

Backwards Ran Booking Until Reeled the Mind - Okay, pop quiz time. What's more prestigious: the X Division Title or the key to a pretty boring looking office? Bzzzz! If you said "title," then you're a wrestling fan. If you said "key," then you're Vince Russo. And he gets to write the show. Now do I actually know that Vince Russo decided that the main event would be Kurt Angle vs. Mick Foley battling for the key to Foley's office? Yeah, I do. Because the key was on top of an effing pole. Even Foley had an extra edge of reality to his acting when he said, roughly as I recall, let's solve all the world's problems by putting stuff on top of a stupid pole.

So the show built to that, instead of building towards Joe vs. Homicide. And that is just dumb as a bag of Corey Deaners. Just look at it this way. Would you, or like anyone else sane, Twitter your friends that they can see Mick Foley fight for a key ... or that two of the better wrestlers in the company were having a title match in a fresh match-up? The prosecution rests. The heck of it all is that Angle and Foley put together a pretty good match, giving that both of them were hobbling around. Hey wait a minute. If both of them were hobbling around - Angle from a strained groin and Foley from years of body abuse - why were they the main event?

Burials - Holy mass cemetery Batman! I don't think I've seen so many wrestlers buried in one show since DX basically buried the whole Raw locker room a couple of years ago. Let's run over some of the corpses ... and could I have phrased that any worse if I tried?

Homicide, R.I.P. - So, lucky old Homicide. He wins the X Division Title, but isn't good enough to be on the pay-per-view. He gets a match against Samoa Joe, who no sells too much of Homicide's offense and then chokes him out, DQ or no DQ. Homicide then looks like a petulant jerk for bitching at his returning tag team partner Hernandez for making the save...as tag team partners are supposed to do.

TNA Originals, R.I.P. - Styles, Daniels, James Storm, and Robert Roode couldn't come up with a fifth member for a ten person tag. Do they like have really, really bad B.O. or something? (Well actually, being sweaty wrestlers they probably do.) How pathetic is that? Was Jay Lethal stuck in traffic? Oh no, wait, he's stuck in 1992.

Amazing Red, R.I.P. - When Kevin Nash invites you to punch him in the jaw, you are officially the new Spike Dudley. Enjoy the view of the ceiling from your back. A sad waste of talent. Knockout Division, R.I. P. - Would you believe that ... wait. This one has to have its own entry.

You Said WHO Won the Women's Battle Royale? - Traci Brooks returned to Impact for the first time in a long time. In fact if memory serves, as I'm too lazy to look it up, I think the last time she had an actual match Hillary Clinton was the likely next President of the United States. So naturally she out-smarts the entire Knockout Division and wins the Battle Royale to be the Chosen One of the MEM. Traci Brooks I mean. Not Hillary Clinton. And I thought Homer Simpson was the Chosen One anyway. So goody gumdrops, now the MEM have THREE women who can't really wrestle worth a lick: Sharmell, Jenna, and our Miss Brooks. Mind you, compared to the first two, Brooks is Bret Hart with hyper-inflated boobs.

Final Thought: I may have made this edition of Impact sound worse than what it was. It wasn't barf bag awful. It just felt thrown together like, I don't know, a leading character and the plot angles surrounding him was suddenly taken off the show and the only thing anyone could do was re-write madly and throw lots of people in the ring at once. And of course that would never happen ... or would it?

Hubert O'Hearn is a new PWTorch Specialist covering TNA Impact with a weekly Hits & Misses column. You can read Hubert's Hits & Misses column and Chris Reed's new TNA Hits & Misses column weekly on PWTorch.com

We suggest these recent related articles...

10/5 WWE Raw Hits & Misses: Natalya vs. Paige, Owens vs. Cara, Stephanie McMahon, Sasha Banks, Xavier Woods

COLLECTIBLES COLUMN: The History of Foam Hands in Pro Wrestling

9/28 WWE Raw Hits & Misses: Kane's Split Personality, Divas Revolution, Heyman & Big Show, Reigns vs. Wyatt